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User blog:Mothman Historian/Reality Distortion and Windows
Since high-school I've been studying The legend and mythology of The Mothman. I personally don't believe that The Mothman actually exists because I am a skeptically minded person and I cannot except sightings and anecdotal evidence as fact, only folklore. Mothman is an un-falsifiable hypothesis meaning that it cannot be proven nor dis-proven. As far as I know its not even really biologically possible but yet it still interests me. In my mind, there is no "Supernatural" because everything that exists in the universe is natural and If it was not natural then it would not exist. However, not all things that exist are considered ordinary or normal so therefore they are "Paranormal". I think that if Mothman existed he would be paranormal. Normality may be subjective based on the person but I think that the term paranormal should mean "things that are considered abnormal to literally anyone" or "things that are not normal to humanity and society". I find the word paranormal to be a human-centric or societal based thing and not a tangible fact of reality. It is simply a classification for strange things. The Mothman flying by is not an expected or normal thing for a human society so if it happened it would be paranormal. John Keel, the main investigator of The Mothman and the author or The Mothman prophecies, came up with a concept known as 'Reality Distortion' to describe the phenomenon where ordinary people see non-existent things. He considered this to only apply to investigators who got too far into it. He used an example of a person he knew who shot at a car after thinking it was a black Cadillac that was following him. I think that this applies to more people than John Keel thought. I think that reality distortion can account for all, or at least most, of the original sightings of Mothman in Point Pleasant from 1966 to 1967.I believe that reality distortion can happen to anyone not just hysteric people or investigators. Reality distortion is simply 'mis-sight' or 'human perception failure'. The original Mothman witnesses were not lying, they genuinely believe what they are saying and in a way they really saw what they think they saw but what they saw does not actually exist and is not real. I believe that people have seen Mothman but I don't believe that Mothman is real. Perhaps a better term would be 'Mental distortion' or 'Perception distortion' but I find Reality distortion to be an appropriate term because the person's reality, or at least what they subjectively perceive to be reality, is being distorted and thus they report on it and speak up about it as if it is an accurate model of what reality actually is. This causes other people to believe that this entity actually exists in reality and infects them with the thought for when they have a similar experience.There is a reason that most paranormal things happen out of the corner of the eye. Just because it isn't real doesn't mean they didn't see it, as the confident witnesses will tell you "I know what I saw!" or "Are you saying I DIDN'T see it?". Basically I'm positing reality distortion as an explanation for the Mothman. I think that witness testimony is completely unreliable and human perception is not to be trusted.This being said, I'm open minded to any other possible explanations and people should be free to believe whatever they wish for the creature. I'm also a big fan of Joe Nickel's explanation of Owls. I sometimes wonder if the reflective glow of owl or cat eyes could have acted as a catalyst for the witnesses reality distortion. All the other explanations for Mothman I find entertaining but way less likely such as Chief Cornstalk's curse, alien, angel, demon, the devil, mutated or undiscovered animal, being from another dimension, flying machine or time traveler. These explanations create healthy variety and expand the mythology. I've found widely different view points among Mothman researchers and I take that as a positive thing which can hopefully create more conversation and debate among Mothman fans. John Keel analyzed what he called "Windows" which are ways in that strange otherworldly creatures could enter our world. He favored this explanation for Mothman. He thought that there were certain places of high strangeness in the world where these windows opened up and let in vistors. I personally find this idea more interesting than Extraterrestrials. I think that beings accidentally ending up here on earth from some kind of portal or window makes a bit more sense than aliens from outer space actually wanting to come and visit this planet. Maybe I'm just more cynical that way, I don't expect space aliens to find our species and our planet to be impressive or noteworthy enough to care. John Keel didn't just think these creatures ended here accidentally but instead that they purposely came here to laugh at how pathetic we are and to mess with us for entertainment. In his book title he called earth the "Disneyland of the Gods". There seems to be theme of boredom being connected to the paranormal in Keel's work. He discovered that more paranormal events seemed to happen on a Wednesday which is of course the middle of the week and also the middle of the business days, a prime time for boredom. Hes quoted as saying "From time to time the playful inhabitants of the other world climb through the curtain in the areas we call 'windows', and they stalk us to drink our blood and create all kinds of mischievous beliefs and misconceptions in our feeble little terrestrial minds". He also said "This planet is haunted by us; the other occupants just evade boredom by filling our skies and seas with monsters". Loren Coleman, Cryptozoologist and friend of John Keel, posited that a way to find these areas is to look for towns or places named in reference to the devil or demons. This signified that whoever named them felt uneasy by them or knew them to be strange in some way. West Virginia is a state that literally has devil horns, which we call panhandles, and yet we wonder why its strange. From what I've seen living here, it truly is Wild and Wonderful. We've got The Mothman in Point Pleasant, The Flatwoods Monster in Braxton County, The old WV state penitentiary in Moundsville and rock formations all across the state called "Devil's Tea Tables". I think that perhaps places aren't strange because of what is built upon them, but instead things are built upon them because the places feel strange. Someone looked at an area in Moundsville and thought it was a good place to bury their bodies, a good place to put a mound. Then much later, someone looked at that exact same area and thought it was a good place to build a prison. The prison suffered extremely inhumane living conditions and medical practices, riots and escapes before eventually being closed down. Prisoners were executed there by hanging and electrocution. They believed that if they died in prison that their "soul" would stay in prison. Now the place is considered paranormal because of strange events. It seemed to make a lot of people uneasy even when it was open, now that its closed its considered even creepier. The Devil's tea tables are not just strange because of their name, these table shaped rocks have a story. As the Folklore goes, if you go up to the tea tables when they are covered by fog, you will meet the devil himself sitting down to have some tea and if you see the devil he will take your soul and use it as sugar for his tea. Its an interesting little cautionary tale. John Keel talked a lot about paranormal events possibly being the cause for superstitions and religion beliefs so perhaps he'd consider these sightings of the devil to be caused by entities traveling through windows. Perhaps he'd consider The Moundsville prison and the devil's Tea tables to be windows. On Twitter, I asked Loren Coleman "Do you think the old WV prison and "Devil's Tea Tables" qualify as Windows like John Keel talked about?". Loren replied back and told me that "Keel might note the prison as *in* a window *area*". As for The Devil's Tea Tables he linked me to one of his older articles about Devil names. So Loren thinks John Keel would consider the prison in a window area, implying that the window is bigger than just the prison and that maybe it extends to the general area. This makes sense because of the large mound near the prison. That grave site is also very strange and its the thing for which Moundsville gets its name from. So maybe the entirety of Moundsville is a window or maybe its just the sweet spot where the prison and mound are. These devil named areas that he linked to, I also consider them to be windows. Saying that the Devil's Tea Tables are indeed paranormal places named after the devil because of their strangeness, is basically the same as saying that they are the areas of high strangeness that John Keel called Windows. So the prison is indeed in a window area and the tea tables are "devil named places" which you could obviously just consider Windows as well. There is no evidence of beings from other dimensions visiting ours. I don't believe entities travel through these areas of strangeness but I do actually think John Keel was onto something with this whole Window idea. I think the only thing in these Window areas are an inherit strangeness detectable by human perception. I genuinely think that there are areas in the world that humans just find to be unsettling for some unknown reason and maybe this leads to them building strange things upon them or even see things that do not exist. I genuinely think that Reality Distortion is an example of the faultiness of human perception and our ability to know what reality is or isn't. So remember, everything is natural but not everything is normal. Until next time, West Virginia, Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking, keep watching the skies. Category:Blog posts